David Walsh; Founder of Firm in Indonesian Gold Mine Fraud

David Walsh, 52, founder of the disgraced Bre-X Minerals Ltd. that sold stock in an Indonesia gold mine that proved to be a hoax. The Montreal-born Walsh was lauded as an entrepreneur in the early 1990s when he built his company from a penny stock operation with reports of a $26-billion gold find in Busang, Indonesia. Bre-X stock was selling at $206 a share when the news struck that samples from the mine had been doctored with gold bought from local miners. The company collapsed in May 1997, Walsh resigned and investors are in litigation. Private investigators believe that the chief geologist, Michael de Guzman, perpetrated the fraud. He apparently committed suicide in March 1997 by jumping from a helicopter near the Indonesian mine. The Bahamas Supreme Court froze Walsh’s assets at the request of trustees handling the bankruptcy of his Canadian company. On Thursday in Nassau, Bahamas, after a stroke.